Artist, Official RAAF War Artist & Victoria’s State Artist
Location: Jewish*H*244
Harold Emanuel Freedman was born in Caulfield, Melbourne, on 21 May 1915 and died in Melbourne on 16 July 1999. A painter, illustrator, cartoonist, printmaker, designer, teacher and muralist, he studied from 1929 to 1935 at the institution then transitioning from the Working Men’s College to Melbourne Technical College, now RMIT University. From 1936 he worked as a freelance illustrator and cartoonist for Melbourne publications, developing the accomplished draughtsmanship and clear narrative style that remained central to his later public art.
Freedman enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force on 7 July 1941, service number 41616, and ultimately held the rank of Flying Officer. After working as a technical illustrator and with the RAAF periodical Wings, he was appointed a war artist attached to the RAAF Historical War Records Section in 1944. He worked in Australia, New Guinea, Noemfoor and Borneo during 1944–45; by 1944 he was Senior Artist in the Historical Section and helped select and supervise fellow RAAF artists Eric Thake and Max Newton.
His wartime output ranged from illustrations and publication designs for the 1942 book These Eagles: Story of the R.A.A.F. at War to paintings of aircraft, repair and salvage operations, and the everyday work of air-force personnel. Works such as Pile of main planes at repair and salvage unit, Noemfoor demonstrate his close observation of operational environments. The Australian War Memorial holds a substantial body of work produced by the RAAF artists, while other wartime works by Freedman entered state collections, including the National Gallery of Victoria’s Liberator interior, presented by the RAAF in 1947.
After the war Freedman resumed commercial and fine-art practice and taught at RMIT. In 1951 he initiated the Melbourne Print Group, whose participants included artists such as Fred Williams. He also produced posters, book illustrations and architectural views, but from the mid-1960s increasingly turned towards large-scale narrative art intended for public buildings and civic spaces.
A decisive commission came from the Australian War Memorial in 1968. The work is sometimes referred to in earlier accounts as the History of Military Aviation, but its official collection title is Mural of Australian Military Aircraft. Completed in 1972, it comprises 26 panels covering almost 256 square metres and was organised into six historical sections. Freedman painted the mural himself, working with RAAF historian Keith Isaacs to research aircraft and markings. The restored mural—depicting 315 aircraft types across Australian military aviation history—is now again displayed in the Memorial’s Aircraft Hall, for the first time since 1999.awm+1
Following the aviation mural, Freedman was appointed Official State Artist for Victoria in 1972, not 1973 as some older secondary accounts suggest. He held the position until 1983. Heritage Victoria describes the appointment as unique in both Victorian and Australian history, while State Library Victoria identifies Freedman as Victoria’s first—and, to date, only—State Artist. The office supported a sequence of government-commissioned murals and mosaics dealing with the history, industries and popular culture of the state.
His first major State Artist commission was the mural officially registered as History of Transport, although it is also widely known as the Cavalcade of Transport. Commissioned for Spencer Street railway station in 1973, the realist oil painting measures 36.6 by 7.32 metres and depicts transport in Victoria between 1835 and 1935. Freedman and two assistants painted it in five sections at the East Camberwell railway substation, completing it in January 1978. During the redevelopment of Spencer Street into Southern Cross Station it was stored for three years, then re-erected in April 2007 on the northern wall of the retail building within the station complex. Listed on the Victorian Heritage Register, it is recognised as Freedman’s largest painted work and as a historically, culturally and socially significant record of Victoria’s development.
Freedman’s Legend of Fire mosaic was commissioned by the Melbourne Metropolitan Fire Brigade for the Eastern Hill Fire Station at the corner of Albert and Gisborne streets, East Melbourne. Begun in 1980 and completed in 1982, the multi-storey glass mosaic was designed and directed by Freedman with master tiler Tony Barese and artists Joe Attard and David Jack. Its approximately 250,000 glass tiles form a narrative drawing upon the Greek stories of Phaeton, Prometheus, Pandora and Zeus, presenting fire as both a destructive force and a gift that can sustain human life. The mosaic remains intact and prominently visible on the building’s exterior.
Other important commissions included the Regional History of Geelong mosaic for the State Government Offices, The Greats of Football for Waverley Park, and the seven-panel History of Australian Thoroughbred Racing at Flemington Racecourse. Freedman’s State Studio operated collaboratively: Joe Attard, David Jack and other artists assisted with the translation of his full-scale designs into murals and mosaics, while younger artists gained practical experience on major public projects. He received the Medal of the Order of Australia in 1989 for his service to art.
Freedman’s importance rests particularly in the scale and public setting of his work. Rather than confining historical painting to galleries, he placed carefully researched visual narratives in railway stations, government offices, sporting grounds, fire-service buildings and the Australian War Memorial. His works and archives are represented in institutions including the Australian War Memorial, National Gallery of Victoria and State Library Victoria, while the heritage registration and conservation of his major murals confirm their continuing significance within Victoria’s public-art history.
Sources:
Principal references: Australian War Memorial, Flying Officer Harold Emanuel Freedman and Harold Freedman’s Aircraft Hall Mural.
Heritage Victoria, History of Transport Mural.
RMIT University Archives, Freedman, Harold.
State Library Victoria, Victoria’s State Artist: Harold Freedman.
Design & Art Australia Online, Harold Freedman: Biography.
East Melbourne Historical Society, Legend of Fire mural.
National Gallery of Victoria, Liberator interior.
Melbourne Mural Studio, A tribute to the former Victoria State Artist.